Welcome to the Journey through the Cuisine, where I am doing an A to Z on Maharashtrian Sweets. It's been a wonderful learning experience, reading through the many blogs I chanced on while searching for the appropriate alphabet.

For A, I had an option of Anarse, Atavala (Rice Methi Kheer), ALivache ladoo. Anarse is same as Athirasam So my next choice was Aliv Seeds or Garden Cress seeds. Since it has another name, which was also tough, I had to leave these Aliv Seeds for that alphabet. I next landed on Flaxseeds which is also called as Alshi in Marathi. Pradnya said this Alsi is a hindi word and maybe used as a slang. However I read it being mentioned as alshi in some of the marathi blogs and moreover by the time I had this conversation with her, my ladoos were done and disappeared as well.

So I have this delicious ladoo made with Flaxseeds and Jaggery. I made another Ladoo which you will get to read later, which again had gond in it. Now the story about gond comes in. I was looking around to get hold of gond, please do not be under the impression that I searched physically.

My looking around will be pinging my buddies on WhatsApp to ask if they know where it is available in Madras. I knew my buddies were the best, someone will either point to the right location or in most case, will offer to get it for me, as Veena does always. In this case, Padma gave me a packet of gond, when I had gone to meet her.

On top, she even lent me her some of her props as I mostly have white props and nothing of the fancy colourful bowls suitable for Sweets. So you see, the props used in this post are the courtesy Padma.

For ease of making, I had paired similar dishes to be cooked on the same day. So just to let you know I made two varieties of ladoos, two varieties of poli ( the Maharashtrian name for rotis). In the end, when I was all set to click, God help me, I forgot which was A and which was the other alphabet.

However, I got the recipe noted down right

Coming to the recipe, these are some healthy ladoos, that you can indulge in as Flaxseed are Omega-3 and Omega-6 elements rich including the goodness of Jaggary.

I had both Flax Seeds and Flax Meal. I used the Flax Meal in this recipe.

Alshi / Linseeds / Flaxseed

Flaxseed Meal

Gond/ Edible Gum powder

Roasted Dry Nuts

Making Jaggery Syrup

Making the Alsi Ladoo

A for Alshi Laddoo

Ingredients for Alsi Ki Pinni

Alshi / Linseeds / Flaxseed Meal - 1 cup

Wheat Flour - 1 cup

Ghee - 3 to 4 tbsp (increase as required)

Jaggery - 3 /4 cup (increase to your taste)

Gond / Edible Gum - 3 tbsp

Roasted nuts:

Cashews, Almonds, Pistachios - 2 tbsp

How to make Alshi Ladoo

If you are making with whole flaxseeds, then dry roast the seeds till you hear a crackling sound, which takes about couple of minutes on hot pan. Cool and grind to a powder.

If using meal, then proceed with roasting the ingredients for the ladoo.

All the steps below can be done in the same non stick pan.

First heat the non stick pan with ghee, roast the gond till it blooms up. Remove to a plate to cool down.

Once cooled down, grind to a powder. Keep it aside.

Next add another tsp ghee, roast the wheat flour till its nicely done. Remove to a bowl.

Follow this by roasting the flaxseed meal in a tsp ghee. Remove.

Finally roast all the dry fruits you are using and keep it aside.

For the jaggery syrup, take the jaggery in 1 /2 cup water and melt it over low flame. When it starts melting and reaches a syrup consistency, (takes about 5 mins), remove from flame.

Take all the roasted wheat flour, Flaxseed meal, roasted nuts, gond, rest of the ghee in a bowl. Pour the melted jaggery syrup into it and mix well with a spoon. Make balls with small portions. Press well to form firm ladoos.

Notes:

Another method to make this would be to add grated jaggery to the roasted flours, add melted ghee and press into ladoos.

If your jaggery syrup becomes hard, do not fear. Let it cool down, break into smaller pieces and pulse it to make a powder. Then you can proceed to make ladoos with the rest of the ingredients.